Abstract
Since the founding of Cornell’s Hotel School—the world’s first, and arguably the finest, collegiate hospitality management program—almost 100 years ago, hospitality management programs have served millions of students and executives worldwide and turned what was simply an occupation into a profession. Our programs are now in jeopardy of declining and ultimately becoming irrelevant. To secure our future, we must deal immediately and effectively with the threats to our existence and seize the opportunities to strengthen our programs. In this article, I present 10 trends that foretell the future decline of hospitality management programs and offer some suggestions to reenergize hospitality management education, research, and engagement.
Introduction: Where It All Started and Where We Are Now
Dr. Howard Bagnall Meek, a Yale economics PhD and Cornell Hotel School’s first dean, was the person who pioneered a focused field of study that has now educated millions all over the world. In the 38 years (1922-1960) during which Dr. Meek built Cornell’s Hotel School, the world’s first collegiate hospitality management program, into the world’s best, he also served as a founder and executive director of Council of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education, the world’s first association of hospitality educators. Today, 98 years after the founding of Cornell’s program, Dean Meek would be troubled to learn that the “major” he helped found was facing an uncertain future.
In a 1993 issue of the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, professors Tom Powers and Carl Riegel, two well-respected hospitality management scholars, offered the following prediction: “Hotel, restaurant, and institutional management education will be alive and productive in 2010.” 1 (p. 295) Just over 25 years after this prediction, a lot has happened to turn the trajectory of hospitality management education from a steeply upward one into what could be best described as a downward spiral. It is my thesis that hospitality management programs as they exist today could very possibly be doomed to failure in the future if we don’t deal immediately and effectively with the causes of their decline and turn things around.
My Background: A Global Perspective
My passion for the hospitality industry was ignited when, after completing a bachelor’s degree in economics, I began my professional career with Oberoi Hotels & Resorts as a management trainee 41 years ago. First as a trainee, and then as a corporate marketing executive with Oberoi Hotels & Resorts in India. At Oberoi, named the world’s best hotel brand several years in a row by the readers of Travel + Leisure magazine, I learned how to truly create value for guests, employees, and investors. My interest in advanced hospitality management education was sparked by Cornell professor Bill Kaven, when I took his professional development course in hotel marketing 39 years ago, who encouraged me to enroll in Cornell Hotel School’s Master of Professional Studies program in Ithaca. I didn’t make it to Ithaca then but found my way to Paris thanks to a scholarship offer from the founding director, and former head of Cornell’s Hotel School, Dean Robert “Bob” Beck, who was Director of Institut de Management Hotelier International—a program created jointly by Cornell’s Hotel School and ESSEC’s Business School. While in France, I was fortunate to secure a summer internship followed by a half-time yearlong position as operations analyst at Hotel George V during the second year of my master’s degree. While at Institut de Management Hotelier International, I was encouraged to apply to the hospitality management PhD program at Virginia Tech by the visiting professor Dr. Michael “Mike” Olsen, for whom I was a teaching assistant and who then became my dissertation advisor. During my time in Virginia, I worked one summer as an assistant to the president of Resort Property Management in Virginia Beach and, after completing my doctoral coursework, was hired as a senior associate with Michael D. Olsen and Associates hospitality management consultants. After completing my PhD, becoming a professor was, at first, just another job. It then became a calling.
I have served on the faculty of Cornell’s Hotel School for 31 years, having earned the highest attainable academic rank (full professor with tenure); taught more than 15,000 students working in 100 plus countries; published more than 140 papers in some of the world’s very best general business publications (Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review), marketing journals (Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research), and hospitality journals (Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management), with more than 6,000 citations; won several teaching and research awards; and had my work presented at most of the major business conferences (American Marketing Association, Academy of Management, INFORMS, etc.), hospitality conferences (CHRIE, AH&LA, NRA, HSMAI, IHRA, etc.), and at some of the world’s best business schools (e.g., Harvard, Wharton, Chicago, Oxford, etc.). Since joining Cornell, I have served as consultant, expert witness, keynote speaker, and workshop leader for hospitality-related firms (e.g., Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, Peninsula, Marriott, Starwood, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Accor, Moevenpick, Taj, Oberoi, Leela, etc.) all over the world.
The thesis presented in the following paragraphs is informed by my more than 40 years of global education and experience in the hospitality industry, which have given me a unique perspective to reflect on the state of hospitality management programs. I present below some evidence to support my thesis, which is that hospitality management programs are doomed to extinction unless we take decisive action to reverse this decline and reenergize our raison d’etre or reason for being.
Hospitality Management Education Trends: 10 Reasons to be Concerned
Consider the following 10 trends that threaten the very survival of hospitality management programs, each one ending with a question for us to ponder:
When I first got to Cornell, I quickly understood that the university community had very mixed feeling toward the Hotel School. On one hand, several colleagues I spoke to from the more “traditional” departments—philosophy, history, economics, English, psychology, romance studies, and even business—expressed disdain for the work the Hotel School was doing and questioned whether we should even exist. On the other hand, university leaders and administrators loved us because we clearly are number one in our field, have graduated some of the most engaged and generous Cornell alumni, are rated among the highest for student satisfaction on Cornell’s campus, have among the best placement records of any Cornell department, and the work we do affects the hospitality industry all over the world. But this derision for a “new” academic field is not a new phenomenon. It was not so long ago that business management programs were considered an illegitimate (nonscholarly) enterprise, not fit to be part of any reputable academic institution. Oxford and Cambridge, relative late comers to the pantheon of leading business schools, had some very contentious and divisive debates before accepting money from Said (Oxford) and Judge (Cambridge) to found their business schools. Today, most academics do not question the presence of a business school on their campus. This is because business schools have carved out a unique, academically rigorous, popular, and profitable reason for their existence. Can hospitality management programs achieve greater legitimacy on our campuses so that we are seen as an asset to the academic reputation of our home institutions?
Several hospitality management programs are being folded into business colleges. Consider Cornell, Michigan State, Washington State, Virginia Tech, Florida State, just to name a few. While some of these “absorptions” result in lower teaching loads, higher salaries, and more research support and output, will this businessification of our programs lead to the diminution of hospitality industry content and relevance in our curricula?
More and more hospitality management programs are hiring professors with business school degrees, at salary premiums over salaries of graduates from hospitality management programs, and letting them continue their nonhospitality-related research at least till earning tenure. How do we incentivize general business scholars to adapt their intellect, theories, and tools to solve hospitality-related problems?
Many hospitality management programs are offering “generic” business school–type courses—for example, marketing management, financial management, organizational behavior, operations management, strategic management, and so on—with little or no hospitality content and with the disclaimer that “concepts are concepts” and applicable across different industries. Consider the following advertisement from one hospitality program: “A Business-Focused Hospitality Degree for Managers, Purdue University’s online MS in Hospitality and Tourism Management program provides the executive management, leadership and analytical skills you need to advance your career within the hospitality industry.” As we increase the use of the word business as a hook for our programs, and a primary brand identifier (e.g., when we use the phrase the business of hospitality), we should not be surprised to see students who would rather go to a business school to get a business education than go to a hospitality school masquerading as a business school. With increasing pressure to “genericize” our courses and faculty, how do we signal to prospective hospitality management students that understanding context matters and learning how to develop innovative solutions to address hospitality problems can pay off?
Professors in many hospitality management programs are being required to publish in business (discipline) journals, implying that hospitality is not really a discipline—at best a field (just like real estate, because we award PhD degrees and have dedicated journals), or at worst merely a context—with the understanding that most top business journals tend to have higher impact factors than most hospitality journals. Because business journals do not care as much about context (hospitality), consider too much context information to be a disqualifier, and require the work to be “context agnostic” and externally valid (applicable) across all domains, we are sending a signal to our faculty that journal quality matters more than the context of their research. This could lead to a wholesale abandonment of hospitality management journals by faculty of hospitality management schools who have little incentive to publish in them. In assessing a colleague’s scholarly record, what weight do we put on publications in hospitality management journals?
Professors at hospitality management programs are being reviewed for tenure by business school peers, using standards used by business schools to evaluate their faculty. Trying to convince our business school colleagues that unlike business schools that by definition are context independent, hospitality management schools are and have to be context dependent seems to be a losing argument. In my experience, my business school colleagues are generally long on rigor but short on relevance, with my hospitality management colleagues the opposite. Even if the “home” school dean makes it a point to communicate her or his school’s hospitality mission to all the stakeholders of a typical business college, many external reviewers from business schools don’t know what to make of this “exception” request leading them to use a different standard to review our promotion and tenure candidates. How do we find a “compensatory” balance between general business and hospitality-related scholarship to increase the level of rigor of our research and yet remain hospitality focused?
Because hospitality, travel, and tourism is a 7 trillion dollar industry globally, amounting to about 10% of world gross domestic product and accounting for about 1 in 10 jobs, 2 more and more faculty at business schools are doing research on hospitality industry challenges/companies and publishing their work in the very best discipline and hospitality journals. Some of these hot topics include sharing economy businesses/Airbnb, online reviews/TripAdvisor, branding/loyalty programs, revenue management/online travel agencies, and the impact of technology on hospitality/big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. How do we ensure that hospitality management faculty are the experts on the most important challenges and opportunities facing the hospitality industry?
Graduates of hospitality management programs are seeking jobs outside the industry, primarily because of low pay and long hours in the hospitality industry. In fact, I have known hospitality management program graduates to say that they have graduated from a “specialized business school” program, and not a hotel management or hospitality management program, to get on interview lists of nonhospitality firms or when applying to top MBA programs. How can we persuade hospitality employers to pay our students wages that are not only on par with business school graduates but also a premium for their commitment to the employer’s context?
Contrary to our many claims of being on the cutting edge of hospitality-related theory and practice, and helping students and executives challenge the status quo, most major hospitality disruptors over the past quarter century (Expedia, Priceline, Booking.com, Kayak, TripAdvisor, Airbnb, etc.) have not been created by hospitality management program graduates. Because we are producing graduates deeply steeped in all aspects of hospitality, how can we ensure that it is our students who are innovating to solve key points of friction in our industry?
Finally, many hospitality firms are hiring nonhospitality program graduates for key positions in the C suite and in vice president positions at hospitality management firms. How do we prepare more of our graduates to climb to the very top of the corporate ladder, in proportion to our numbers, in our own industry?
The Next 100 Years: Opportunities to Raise the Bar
Hospitality management programs today face an inexorable decline, and some could go extinct. Our choice is clearly a binary one: (1) Do we address the trends described above to safeguard and strengthen maintain our legitimacy by revitalizing our programs, rigorizing our research programs, and recommitting to our industry? or (2) Do we simply fold our programs into business schools at our universities, try and become the “hospitality experts” within generic business schools, enjoy their benefits but play by their rules risking denials of tenure and promotion, and ultimately go extinct?
Since the founding of Cornell’s Hotel School almost 100 years ago, hospitality management programs have served millions of students and executives worldwide and turned what was an occupation into a profession. In my 40+ years of learning and teaching, I have fallen only more in love with an industry that does so much good for so many. As we approach the 100th year of Cornell Hotel School’s founding—2022—I am afraid that the time for the specialized study of hospitality management may be under threat.
If we are to remain relevant and impactful, continue to earn the respect of our university department colleagues, and reverse the diminishment of our hospitality management programs, here is a five-part road map to consider:
Develop tighter connections with the industry by keeping abreast of current trends, maintain a stronger presence at industry events, and increase collaboration with industry executives in all our work, including serving on industry committees and having hospitality executives serve on ours.
Ground our research more firmly in hospitality contexts, solve industry problems by tackling research questions that are relevant and impactful, and publish more of our work in the highest quality general business discipline journals and hospitality journals.
Infuse our teaching throughout with additional hospitality examples, cases studies, and research-based insights to maintain an even greater distinctness from generic business school courses.
Strive to become “mission critical” to the colleges and universities to which we belong by expanding and explaining the impact of our work, chairing and serving on key committees, and serving on university and college leadership teams, so that our peers appreciate the scale, scope, and significance of the work we do.
Work more closely with other hospitality management programs around the world, just as Dean Meek originally envisioned, to develop a shared purpose, priorities, and strategies. We would all be well served to heed Benjamin Franklin’s famous comment at the time of the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Hospitality management education has given my students and me a great life, helped us make many friends, opened many doors, and taken many of us all over the world. The size and scope of the hospitality business is enormous, and the opportunities and challenges facing it are endless. Take just one segment of the hospitality business: hotels. There are approximately 16 million rooms worldwide (not including Airbnb, which adds another 7 million lodging units), with an approximate average replacement value of $100,000, putting the “market cap” value of the global hotel business at $1.6 trillion. The current global hotel construction pipeline is at a record high with 14,051 projects (2.3 million rooms) under construction, getting ready to start construction or in the early planning stages. 3 To this add the thousands of restaurants, theme parks, casinos, cruise ships, and other places that lodge, feed, and entertain billions of our fellow citizens. Who is going to help owners and operators of these assets survive and thrive? Everything we have learned about successfully managing hospitality businesses, from practice and from research, over the past 100 years, tells me that a generic business education isn’t going to do it.
On a personal note, my younger son, who just turned 18 years, witnessing my rich and varied professional life, despite all its ups and downs, was just admitted to Cornell’s Hotel School (no pressure from Dad, I swear!). It is with some trepidation that I helped nurture his interest in getting a college education focused on the hospitality business. For his sake, and for the sake of thousands of students and executives all over the world, I would very much like to see hospitality management education programs raise the bar to a whole new level of excellence so that we can continue to be the choice of métier for those who want to thrive in this exciting, diverse, global, dynamic, and growing business for the next 100 years.
Footnotes
Author’s Note:
This article is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Mike Olsen, former Department Head of Hospitality and Tourism at Virginia Tech, who aways encouraged me to challenge the status quo. I am deeply grateful to those who took the time and trouble to provide feedback, which helped clarify my thinking and improve this work. Thank you (in alphabetical order, by first name) Alex Susskind, associate dean of the School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University; Anjana Dev, associate professor at Gargi College, Delhi University; Bonnie Knutson, professor at the School of Hospitality Business at Michigan State University; David Corsun, director of the Fritz Knoebel School of Hospitality Management, University of Denver; Fred DeMicco, former director of the Department of Hospitality Management, University of Delaware; Inès BLAL, executive dean, Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne; John O’Neill, former director of the School of Hospitality Management, Penn State; Kaye Chon, dean of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Michael Redlin, former associate dean of the School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University; Nicolas Graf, associate dean of the Tisch Center of Hospitality, New York University; Scott Berman, hospitality industry leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers; and Stowe Shoemaker, dean of the Harrah Collage of Hospitality, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.